The present invention relates to an automatic safety seatbelt installed in a vehicle, and more particularly to an automatic safety seatbelt which properly extends diagonally across a passenger in the vehicle such that it combines comfort and safety for the user.
Many current vehicle designs utilize some type of longitudinal floor tunnel for such items as a fuel tank installed thereunder. Hence, the height of the longitudinal tunnel must permit a fuel tank to be installed underneath the tunnel, requiring in many instances a significant vertical height. This creates a limited amount of space for mounting a seatbelt retractor within the passenger compartment. Therefore, it has been proposed that a seatbelt retractor should be mounted on a top surface of the longitudinally extending floor tunnel. When the seatbelt retractor is mounted on the top surface of the longitudinally extending floor tunnel, the seatbelt retractor typically is positioned such that it is higher than a passenger's hip. Hence, as shown in FIG. 3, if a shoulder webbing 10 is pulled through a webbing guide 18 from a seatbelt retractor cover 24, the shoulder webbing 10 extends diagonally across a passenger's chest to a shoulder anchor, which is fixed at an upper point of the vehicle body at a position which is vertically higher than a desirable position. This result occurs because the shoulder webbing 10 exits the seatbelt retaining cover 24 through the webbing guide 18 at an undesirably high vertical position. This causes a passenger to experience discomfort.